


Spoiler: The Lawyers Are Not Zombies

by deskclutter



Category: Discworld - Pratchett, Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: Crack, F/M, M/M, Multi, double-date, too alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a kink meme prompt. Lu Tse makes people double-date so Time will stop meddling in his affairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spoiler: The Lawyers Are Not Zombies

  
His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes of Ankh Morpork was aware he probably functioned as the butt of some cosmic joke from Cori Celesti's line of view. There was no other plausible reason for a good boy from Cockbill Street to earn his way up to the (formerly; Carrot seemed to like it well enough) miserable rank of Captain of the Night Watch through rite of accident, and then all the way to the bloody Duke of Ankh Morpork through right of Vetinari.

All the same, this stretched things.

"Sam," Sybil said with remarkable calm. "Who is this man?"

Vimes glared at the grinning monk. "You remember the, er, problematic case around the time young Sam was born, dear?"

"Not completely, Sam," Sybil said. "I was a little busy at the time."

Vimes cleared his throat. "Yes, well. This b--man helped to make it so I was in thick of the, er. The busyness, rather than thirty years in the past."

"Oh," said Sybil, smiling. "He's one of your contacts, then. You should have just said so, Sam," she added reproachfully.

Vimes sighed. "Yes, dear."

"Is it not written," said Lu Tze beatifically, "that a good man is one who knows when to be quiet."

Sybil said, "Any of Sam's friends are mine, and are perfectly welcome to kidnap the both of us."

"Sybil!" Vimes exclaimed.

"You are routinely kidnapped by your Watchmen, Sam," Sybil said reasonably.

"Not since young Sam was born," Vimes protested.

"And that is part of the problem," Lu Tze said smoothly. he cleared his throat officiously. "It has come to the attention of my superiors that you don't pay enough attention to your wife."

"Oh I say," Sybil began as Vimes said loudly. "What the bloody hell does that have to do with a monk of time?"

"Precisely," said Sybil, bearing her gaze down on Lu Tze. It was a very good gaze, with lots of Breeding and Nobility about it. Lesser men quailed in its wake. Vimes had seen it politely dissuade Carrot in full steam once.

"Ah," said Lu Tze. "Firstly, you mistake my position. I am but a humble sweeper--"

Vimes glared harder.

"And secondly," Lu Tze said hurriedly, "I am but Time's humble servant in this. When a man's wife is pregnant, you see, when he says jump, you say, "Am I not your master? Did I not teach you to slice as a true adept does? Did I not teach you the Way of Mrs Cosmopilite?' But when he says, 'Sweeper, is it not written, "Do as I say, not as I do"? Well, the second part of that wasn't pertinent, but I am Time, and I am asking you--'"

"I ... thought Time was a woman," Sybil said politely.

"She had a son," said Lu Tze. "Which is understating it, but the story's complicated."

"This doesn't explain anything!" Vimes pointed out, jabbing his cigar at Lu Tze.

"Oh dear," said Sybil. "Mister Lu Tze, would you mind terribly if I asked you to explain why Time wants Sam and I to go on a double date?"

"His wife's pregnant," Vimes said before Lu Tze opened his mouth.

"Very good, Mister Vimes!"

"Pregnant women generally want impossible things," Vimes said. "I haven't had any firsthand experience," he added quickly.

"Very good, Mister Vimes! But nah, Miss Susan's actually pretty damn practical about these things," said Lu Tze. "It's all out of that boy's head. Wants everyone to have a neat happy ending now that he's got his. Wrapped his head around the concept of matchmaking."

"Matchmaking," Vimes said. "We're already married!"

"Is it not written: practice makes perfect?" said Lu Tze. "After all, he wants the best for his old master. By the time the baby comes and he loses interest, I will have high-tailed it to Fourecks where Susan won't let him go. Very practical woman, that one."

Vimes felt his wife take his hand. "Let's humour the poor man, Sam," she said. "It isn't proper to anger anthropomorphic personifications, you know."

"It is an all expense paid trip!" Lu Tze said. "Take advantage! I'm cutting--"

"Don't finish that sentence," Vimes said. He sighed. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I get back to the Watch?"

"Yes, Sam," said Sybil patiently.

"Fine," he said.

"Very good, Mister Vimes," beamed Lu Tze. Tiny footsteps pattered up behind the sweeper. "Be gentle with these two, they're not of this world."

Vimes snorted. "What are they, angels?"

"Far from it, Mister Vimes," said Lu Tze. "Hoi! Luggage! Open up."

The Luggage obligingly spat out two men in fancy suits. The one with the frilly neckpiece made Vimes' hackles rise. He could almost smell the gilt.

"OBJECTION!" They yelled in unison.

"Oh good gods," Sybil breathed beside Vimes.

"We're supposed to double-date them?!" Vimes demanded. "Are you insane, man?"

"Now, now, Mister Vimes, it is the century of the Anchovy! Two men--"

"I don't give a damn if they're men, trolls, dwarves, or the backwater cousins of Wee Mad Arthur!" Vimes shouted. "I was talking about--"

"I say, Sam," said Sybil, peering at them. "Aren't they a bit too alive to be lawyers?"

  
_EPILOGUE:_  
A young man appeared before the doorway of Marietta Cosmopilite in a swirl of cherry blossoms. No one turned a hair. This was, after all, Ankh Morpork.

"I seek a bald man," he said to the landlady, who sniffed.

"Dances in the streets?" she asked. "Bangs on his drum thing?"

"Yes," admitted the man. "He was my teacher. And I can see him trying to edge away out the back door."

"Bugger and blast," said Lu Tze. "You were supposed to look in Fourecks for the next three months, boy!"

"But I have learnt so much from you, Sweeper," Lobsang said peaceably. "Is it not written, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'? And the fifth element is, after all, Surprise."

"You don't look very surprised," Lu Tze accused.

"I'm afraid not," Lobsang said. "Are you coming?"

After a lengthy farewell to Mrs. Cosmopilite and a promise to send her real money for the legwarmers the next time, they began walking home. "All right," Lu Tze said suddenly. "Have it your way. Why?"

Infuriatingly, Lobsang knew immediately what Lu Tze was talking about. "The simple reasons are the best, aren't they, Sweeper?"

"You need a few more years on you before you can really pull that tone off," Lu Tze observed. "Get on with it."

"Everyone deserves love," said Lobsang.

Lu Tze looked shrewdly at Lobsang out of the corner of his eye. "I don't buy it," he declared. "Out with it, my former apprentice."

Lobsang sighed. "Susan has commandeered the television imps."

"The ones from the future?"

"Yes," said Lobsang. "I can't pull more of them back, because of time-space issues and other complicated things that you never want to know about. I was forced to make my own entertainment."

They sliced in silence for long moments as the world turned blue around them.

"Your wife is a scary lady," said Lu Tze at last.

"She knows," Lobsang sighed.


End file.
